With the ever-increasing sizes of USB and SD/CF memory sticks, more and more users will want -- or need -- to partition this memory into manageable volumes.  I bought my first USB stick (a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB) thinking I could partition it into multiple 2GB volumes (I needed one to use for a 2GB disk image backup).  I was surprised to discover Windows will not allow partitioning of removable USB drives.

So off to the web I went, in search of an easy workaround.  And I found a solution that doesn't involve any registry edits or other heavy duty hacks.  All that's involved is replacing the driver for a USB stick with one that ignores its removable drive bit.

Here's a detailed procedure:

1. Search the web for "xpfildrvr1224_320.zip".  This archive contains a driver for Hitachi's MicroDrive, which fortunately also works for virtually all USB memory sticks.  Also note this driver is identical for both Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

2. Extract two files, cfadisk.inf and cfadisk.sys to a folder of your choice.

3. Load cfadisk.inf into Notepad.

4. In a separate window, run regedit.exe and navigate to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR

Search the entries under this key for your USB stick.  Copy or write down the exact "HardwareID" string shown for your stick.  You may see multiple entries, but you only need the first one shown.  In the case of my 8GB Cruzer Micro the exact string was:

USBSTOR\DiskSanDisk_Cruzer__________8.01

Be sure to include the underscores, if you see any: in my case there was one before the "Cruzer" and a set of ten after it.

5. Go back to the cfadisk.inf Notepad screen and find the [cfadisk_device] section.  Add a line at the start of this section for your USB stick.  For my Cruzer the exact line was:

%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\DiskSanDisk_Cruzer__________8.01

6. Save the change to cfadisk.inf, then go into Device Manager, and under "Disk drives" (category name may be different in XP) locate the USB stick.  Note: ignore all entries under "USB" or "USB controllers".

7. Double-click the entry, select Update Driver and search for the new INF file you edited previously.

8. After the new driver is loaded, reboot your system with the USB stick still in place.  Check your system bios to make sure your boot device order (and boot controller order, if you have a bios option for that) are still set correctly.

That's it!  Once you reboot, your USB stick will be seen as a regular hard drive.  You can partition and format it normally using Windows' Disk Management, and each volume can be assigned a separate drive letter according to your preferences.

This workaround obviously isn't going to work for everyone.  But so far, Disk Management in Win2K SP4 has had no problem seeing and using all four volumes on the 8GB Cruzer.  I even used Ghost 5.1c to do an image backup to one of its 2GB partitions (it took a while, 35 minutes, but it worked flawlessly).

I wonder what Sandisk and other manufacturers have in mind for future products, when it comes to partitioning.  I mean, they can't expect to sell many 16GB, 32GB etc sticks and not give people some way to partition them.

These drives are fast becoming the preferred choice for system backups.  Do I even need to explain why?  It's a heck of a lot less expensive and more convenient than buying additional hard drives, and faster than backing up 4GB at a time onto DVD recordables.

On a single 8GB Cruzer stick I now have complete system/boot partition backups of both my Win2K and XP systems, and an additional volume for all of my program data.  Many more things would be possible with a partitioned 16GB or 32GB stick.

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JeffG wrote:

On a single 8GB Cruzer stick I now have complete system/boot partition backups of both my Win2K and XP systems, and an additional volume for all of my program data.  Many more things would be possible with a partitioned 16GB or 32GB stick.

 

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Gotta agree with drlucky on this one.

There is no advantage to having partitions on flash memory.  There is actually disadvantages, as only an OS will be able to read these partitions, so you will never be able to use the max capacity in any other device.

Oh, and one other thing.  The only modern OS in the world that can not partition flash memory is... you guessed it, Windows.

So, in reality this is much more a Microsoft issue.

@ rsbrown:

no security on creating multiple partitions on the drive. Just plug it in on a MAC or Linux system and security? naaaahhhh... You just divided your drive and doing a partition is no more than a shallow attempt for security. Cruzers have a built in security enabler that partitioning cannot compare to.

partitioning is not = to security.

on non u3 flashdrives, you can achieve this by using truecrypt.